Snow pants, again

She slumps in a profound dejection from the weather. Another day of snow pants. On every day since before Christmas break, she has had to pull on those heavy, insulated, snow clownish pants, because a winter thrust from the frozen furnaces of some Viking hell of ice and snow will not depart these dead cold lands.

She dutifully pulls them up and fusses with the Velcro tighteners. I offer to help. She just stands there with dull, downcast eyes. I tighten them and she does not seem satisfied but mutters “they’re OK, they’re OK” with the resignation of a gut shot soldier surrounded by enemy bayonets, weakly waving his white handkerchief in surrender.

These are the days of the bundled who barely cling to a slight grip on the ice-blanketed wasteland. Every day is snow pants day. Last year maybe once or twice. Same with the year before. Her years of preschool and kindergarten were years of unholy warm winters allowing freedom and grace of movement, unencumbered by puffiness and man-made fibers and fabric.

I am become snowman, she must think. I am become frosty.

Robert Salsbury

Spokane Valley